Exteranl HD / Thumb Drive (1 Viewer)

Dick7Access

Dick S
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The router at the nursing home my wife is at blocks me from using carbonite back up. I have resorted to using a external hard drive that I have to drag out, plug in the power pack, plug in the USB. Does anybody know if they make a Thumb drive with built in software to automatically back up whenever the computer is on?
 

speakers_86

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I don't know about that but Microsoft has free software called Sync Toy. It works quite well.
 

Steve R.

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The router at the nursing home my wife is at blocks me from using carbonite back up.
Are you attempting to copy files on your wife's computer from a remote location, such as your house?


I have resorted to using a external hard drive that I have to drag out, plug in the power pack, plug in the USB.
I don't follow? Why would you need both an external hard drive and a USB flash drive?

Does anybody know if they make a Thumb drive with built in software to automatically back up whenever the computer is on?
This seems backward. I would think that you would want to install software on your wife's computer that would automatically transmit the data to be saved to your remote location, if that is what you are doing.

Look into: File Transfer Protocol. You will need to do an internet search on how this can be done. Here is one example picked at random. How to set-up a home FTP server..

Please note that I have never set-up an FTP server. I just have conceptual knowledge of how this is done.
 

Dick7Access

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Are you attempting to copy files on your wife's computer from a remote location, such as your house?


I don't follow? Why would you need both an external hard drive and a USB flash drive?

This seems backward. I would think that you would want to install software on your wife's computer that would automatically transmit the data to be saved to your remote location, if that is what you are doing.

Look into: File Transfer Protocol. You will need to do an internet search on how this can be done. Here is one example picked at random. How to set-up a home FTP server..

Please note that I have never set-up an FTP server. I just have conceptual knowledge of how this is done.

I apologize for not being clearer.
Her computer stays with her at the nursing home. While she was home with me we had all out computers backed by via our WiFi server. We use carbonite as our company, which backs up every thing as the data builds or is updated. When she entered the nursing home their server would not allow access to carbonite. I tried other company like I-Drive and there server blocked all of them. I fought with them for 2 years. In the mean time I would take her computer to a restaurant WiFi connection and back it up once a week. That got to be expensive and time consuming, so I started backing up her computer on a external hard drive. The problem with a external hard drive is there is no place in her little room to leave the external hard drive connected permanently. So once a week I have to dig it out from her draw, take it to the dinning room, find an open table that has a electrical outlet near by, plug in the power pack, plug in the USB plug in her computer and manually transfer all her files. If they make a thumb drive that would behave like a external hard drive that we could leave installed all the time.
 

Steve R.

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So once a week I have to dig it out from her draw, take it to the dinning room, find an open table that has a electrical outlet near by, plug in the power pack, plug in the USB plug in her computer and manually transfer all her files.

Western Digital has a USB hard drive that uses the USB port for power. You won't have to find an outlet. It also comes with some back-up software. I have not used that software, so I can't comment on it.

If they make a thumb drive that would behave like a external hard drive that we could leave installed all the time.
For this situation you will need to use an "old" style MS-DOS batch file. I am out of practice with those. Below is a Linux batch file that can serve as an example. "anacrontab" (a system daemon) executes the Linux batch file below a few minutes after the computer boots and makes a backup of all my MS Windows files. Since you are using MS Windows, a modified version would have to be developed, which is beyond me. Another person on the forum may know how to code an MS-DOS batch file and have it execute at a specific time.

Code:
#!/bin/bash
# Executed from /etc/anacrontab

cp -f -R -L -p "/media/windows/Users/Stephen/My Documents/Access" /home/steve/windows_backup/
cp -f -R -L -p "/media/windows/Users/Stephen/My Documents/Financial" /home/steve/windows_backup/
cp -f -R -L -p "/media/windows/Users/Stephen/My Documents/Quicken" /home/steve/windows_backup/
cp -f -R -L -p "/media/windows/Users/Stephen/My Documents/Utilities" /home/steve/windows_backup/
cp -f -R -L -p "/media/windows/Users/Stephen/My Documents/My Garmin" /home/steve/windows_backup/
cp -f -R -L -p "/media/windows/Users/Stephen/My Documents/POI_Data_Files" /home/steve/windows_backup/

chown -f -R steve:backup /home/steve/windows_backup
 
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